Awful first period dooms Phoenix Coyotes in loss

It wasn't until 8 minutes and 21 seconds were played in the first period of Saturday's clash with the Los Angeles Kings that the Coyotes registered a shot on net.

Forward Taylor Pyatt was the lucky one, snapping a wrist shot that clipped goaltender Jonathan Quick in the shoulder and dipped into the corner of the rink.

Meanwhile, the Kings had already bounced 10 pucks toward Ilya Bryzgalov's crease with two counting as goals. The shot count at that juncture of the period hinted at the lopsided effort on the ice.

The Kings ended the period up 3-1 and secured a 4-3 victory at Jobing.com Arena despite a tenacious push by the Coyotes in the second. The win split the home-at-home series that saw the Coyotes take the first game at the Staples Center on Thursday.

The first period of play for the Coyotes was a feast of turnovers served with a lack of intensity. When intermission commenced, Tippett's message to his players was simple.

"We got to get into battles here," he said. "We were too far away from the battles, two stick lengths when you've got to be on top of the battle. We weren't hard enough on the puck. We weren't advancing the puck. They were owning us down low in our own zone. They were hard around our net and . . . tonight they had a purpose to get there and we fed their fire a little bit there by turning pucks over and letting them get there."

When intermission dismissed, a new version of the Coyotes emerged. A power play goal by Martin Hanzal and a wrist shot by Lee Stempniak, his second of the game, netted the score at three.

"We just sort of relaxed," Stempniak said. "We got a pretty smart group of guys and we just took a step back and realized we aren't doing anything right, and for us to have success we have to do things that make our team that much better."

But one sequence early in the third period had the Coyotes turning the puck over like they did in the first, and the Kings capitalized with the game-winning goal. The attempted comeback was courageous, especially considering defenseman Michal Rozsival left the game with a lower-body injury and veteran blue liner Derek Morris was a scratch with his own lower-body injury.

"Obviously we didn't get the outcome that we wanted," defenseman Keith Yandle said. "But I think it did show good character in our team to come back from down three."